Monday, April 7, 2014

Hillary Clinton distinguishes between Syria & Libya: "There’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities"

Appearing on CBS Face the Nation in March of 2011, Hillary Clinton was asked whether the Obama administration would respond to the Syrian regime opening fire and killing anti-government protesters the same way it responded to the violence in Libya, and whether the administration would take similar action to put an end to the carnage in Syria.

Clinton made a distinction between Syria and Libya, and between Bashar Assad and his father, Hafez Assad, the former President of Syria.

"There is a different leader in Syria now," Clinton said. "Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer. What’s been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning. But there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities, then police actions, which frankly have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see."

Of course the number of people who were killed during the Libyan upheaval is now a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people who've been killed in Syria [over 100,000, and probably a lot more than that. The UN does not keep a tally of the death toll in Syria anymore because it is too large to track].

Moreover, Clinton argued that "there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities [in Libya], than police actions [in Syria]."

But calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing its own cities is precisely what the Syrian regime has been doing for quite some time.

Just one example: The UPI reported on Monday that "Air raids by the Assad regime killed around 30 Syrians as the government continued to drop barrel bombs on civilians"....

Oh, well....

The report also went on to say:

More than 100,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began 3 years ago...

The West may not be making many substantial efforts in Syria, but Russia is sending more weapons to the Assad regime during a time when Russia already has escalated tensions with the international community after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

"Russia is now doing everything to ensure that Assad wins convincingly," said Alexei Malashenko, a Middle East analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "If Russia can show it’s capable of carrying out its own foreign policy, regardless of America’s wishes, it will be a major achievement for Putin."

Hezbollah, which has been fighting alongside the pro-government forces, says Syria's government is no longer at risk of being toppled.

OBAMA: 'END-OF-LIFE CARE' TOO COSTLY!

"I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care... is what you do around things like end-of-life care.... I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here!"Barack Obama in an interivew with the New York Times - April 2009